


Jack Murdock's Last Match

by WriterJace



Series: The Corona!AU no one has waited for [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: COVID-19, Coronavirus, Creel vs Murdock, Gen, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Quarantine, boxing match, lockdown - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23653924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterJace/pseuds/WriterJace
Summary: The second day of lockdown."That night, Matt couldn’t sleep again. It wasn’t because of the small noises of the house and the neighbourhood, not this time.It was because of Candace. Their conversation over dinner must have piqued her interest because for the past twenty minutes, she’d been listening to his father’s boxing matches and he just. couldn’t. stop. listening."
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: The Corona!AU no one has waited for [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702345
Kudos: 37





	Jack Murdock's Last Match

Matt and Foggy mostly kept to themselves during the first day.

Foggy lay on his bed and played PlayStation to his heart’s desire, something he usually didn’t have a lot of free time to do, at least not without feeling guilty about doing that when he should be studying instead.

Matt used the free time to listen to an audiobook and just lie on his bed, taking in the unfamiliar sounds of the neighbourhood. He dozed off for a while, listening to a nature documentary someone a few stories above them was watching.

Lunch wasn’t a big deal in the Nelson household, so Foggy just made them some sandwiches to eat in their room. Matt was worried about seeing anti-social and rude, but Foggy assured him it was okay and that they’d be seeing enough of each other in the coming weeks anyway. It was better to get their distance where they could, and while Candace didn’t make too much of a fuss about being banned from her own bedroom.

In the evening, though, they joined the others for a nice meal together. Candace complained about how inept her teachers were at giving them their assignments to work on online. Foggy talked about maybe splurging on a new game now that he had so much time to play.

Matt mostly stayed silent. The nature documentary wasn’t something he could admit to having heard, the audiobook was about true crime and therefore not an appropriate topic of discussion at dinner, and other than that his day had been extraordinarily unspectacular.

“Matt, I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while. Any relation to the boxer, Jack Murdock?”

This was a question Matt was used to from older Hell’s Kitchen people – his father had been something of a minor celebrity around here.

“Yeah, he was my dad.”

“Was?” Candace asked. Foggy groaned beside her.

Matt smiled in her direction. “Yeah. He died when I was ten.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. How’d he die?”

“Candace!” both Foggy and Mrs Nelson reprimanded her.

“It’s okay,” Matt said. It had been a long time, so he didn’t mind talking about his dad. For most of the year it was fine, it was just on his dad’s birthday and death day that it was a difficult topic to deal with.

The problem was that he had no idea how to answer that question for a fifteen-year-old. He was murdered after getting sucked into corruption by accepting bribes and deliberately throwing matches to pay all the expenses that came with having a blind kid? Yeah, maybe not.

“He was killed,” he said simply.

The mood at the table was not great after that. The same thing had happened the night before, but maybe that time Candace hadn’t noticed just why everyone got so quiet at the mention of Matt’s father. Well, now she knew.

Matt hoped they’d get over this awkwardness at any mention of Matt’s past because they were going to spend a lot of time together and this was going to get old very quickly.

To change the topic to something happier, he turned towards Mr and Mrs Nelson and asked them what they did for a living, realising too late what a minefield that particular question was during these times when so many people weren’t allowed to go to work. He was not disappointed – it turned out they owned a hardware store that didn’t yield a lot of profit during the best of times, and now it was closed for an indeterminate amount of time because of the pandemic.

He decided to keep quiet again after that. This dinner conversation had turned into enough of a disaster already. He’d considered taking a second helping of the pasta Mrs Nelson had made but realised how much of a financial strain the Nelsons were under and having to feed an extra mouth probably didn’t help. Matt insisted he was full and was determined to figure out a way to help out financially, since he knew Foggy’s parents would not accept any money he tried to give them.

That night, Matt couldn’t sleep again. It wasn’t because of the small noises of the house and the neighbourhood, not this time.

It was because of Candace. Their conversation over dinner must have piqued her interest because for the past twenty minutes, she’d been listening to his father’s boxing matches and he just. couldn’t. stop. listening.

Some of them brought back specific memories of sitting at home, watching the TV, and cheering his dad on.

But mostly it was just grunting and the sound of boxing gloves hitting skin, badly recorded and slightly distorted through Candace’s headhones and the wall that separated them. The matches had never been the same after Matt’s accident, with how little TV screens could tell Matt about what was really going on in the ring. The commentators never gave him all the information he wanted either.

He’d played with the idea of having Foggy narrate them for him, but Foggy didn’t know anything about boxing, so he might have to teach him first, and besides, it was nice to have these videos just to himself. Anything to do with his dad was still very personal and not something Matt was eager to share.

Matt wondered how long this was going to go on. Surely his dad’s old matches couldn’t be that interesting to Candace?

A few second later, he wished she’d lost interest earlier because he recognised that beginning commentary even before it mentioned any names, despite not having listened to it even once in all the years since it had been aired.

It was the Creel vs Murdock fight.

The last fight before Jack Murdock’s murder, the reason Matt was orphaned at nine years old.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t listen to this. As quickly and quietly as he could, Matt shimmied open a window and made his way down to the ground. He was only in a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, not enough for a chilly March night, and he didn’t have his cane or even his shoes with him, only the socks he’d worn to sleep.

Matt broke into a run, just running along the street until he could no longer hear anything from Candace’s headphones. He stayed outside, walking around to keep himself warm and making sure not to come too close to the apartment just in case, for about an hour.

By the time he was outside the building again, Candace had moved on to listening to music of what Matt assumed was one of the boy bands that decorated the walls of her bedroom.

He climbed back in and threw the now ruined socks away before lying back down on his makeshift bed.

He couldn’t fall asleep for another hour at least, too caught up in memories of his dad.


End file.
